Workers with heavy machinery resumed searching through the rubble of homes, schools and mosques Wednesday, with hope of finding any survivors fading.

Muhammad Zainul Majdi, the governor of West Nusa Tenggara province which covers Lombok, said there was a dire need for medical staff, food and medicine in the worst-hit areas.

Hundreds of bloodied and bandaged victims have been treated outside damaged hospitals in the main city of Mataram and other badly affected areas.

“We have limited human resources. Some paramedics have to be at the shelters, some need to be mobile,” Majdi told AFP.

“The scale of this quake is massive for us here in West Nusa Tenggara, this is our first experience.”

Some evacuees are grappling with the traumatic scenes of death and destruction that accompanied the quake.

“I saw my neighbour get stuck in the rubble and die. He asked me for help, but I couldn’t help him, we just ran to help ourselves,” Johriah, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP tearfully.

The Indonesian Red Cross said it had set up 10 mobile clinics in the north of the island and a field hospital had been established near an evacuation centre catering to more than 500 people in the village of Tanjung.

Kurniawan Eko Wibowo, a doctor at the field hospital, said most patients were suffering broken bones and head injuries.

“We lack the infrastructure to perform operations because (they) need to be performed in a sterile place,” Wibowo told AFP.

– ‘Destruction almost 100 percent’ –

Across much of the island, once-bustling villages have been turned into virtual ghost towns.

“In some villages we visited the destruction was almost 100 percent, all houses collapsed, roads are cracked and bridges were broken,” said Arifin Muhammad Hadi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Red Cross.

Makeshift encampments have popped up on the side of roads and rice fields, with many farmers reluctant to move far from their damaged homes and leave precious livestock behind.

“It’s typical of earthquake victims in Indonesia, they want to stay close to their livelihood, they can’t bring their livestock to the shelters,” Hadi said.

Local authorities, international relief groups and the central government have begun organising aid, but shattered roads have slowed efforts to reach survivors in the mountainous north and east of Lombok, which was hardest hit.

The Indonesian military said that three Hercules transporter planes packed with much-needed food, medication, blankets, tents and water tanks have now arrived in Lombok.

But some evacuees have complained of being ignored or of experiencing long delays for supplies to arrive at shelters.

“There has been no help at all here,” said 36-year-old Multazam, who was staying with hundreds of others under tarpaulins on a dry paddy field outside West Pemenang village.

“We have no clean water, so if we want to go to the toilet we use a small river nearby,” he said, adding they needed food, bedding and medicine.

– Tourists flee –

The quake struck as evening prayers were being said across the Muslim-majority island and there are fears that one collapsed mosque in north Lombok had been filled with worshippers.

Crews using heavy equipment resumed the search Wednesday for survivors in the mosque, now reduced to a pile of concrete and metal bars, with its towering green dome folded in on itself.

Rescuers have found three bodies and also managed to pull one man alive from the twisted wreckage.

“We estimate there are still more victims because we found many sandals in front of the mosque,” Nugroho said Tuesday.

Among other major buildings to collapse were a health clinic, government offices and other public facilities, he added.

Meanwhile, the evacuation of tourists from the Gili Islands — three tiny, coral-fringed tropical islands off the northwest coast of Lombok — has finished, officials said.

“Most foreign tourists have been evacuated,” Yusuf Latif, national search and rescue team spokesman, told AFP.

Lombok airport’s general manager said airlines had laid on extra flights and his staff had been providing blankets and snacks.

Indonesia evacuated hundreds of tourists from popular resorts and sent rescuers fanning across the holiday island of Lombok after a powerful quake killed at least 91 people and reduced thousands of buildings to rubble.

The shallow 6.9-magnitude quake sparked terror among tourists and locals alike, coming just a week after another deadly tremor surged through Lombok, killing at least 17 people.

Rescuers on Monday searched for survivors in the rubble of houses, mosques and schools that were destroyed in the latest disaster which struck on Sunday evening.

“There are challenges: the roads were damaged, three bridges were also damaged, some locations are difficult to reach and we don’t have enough personnel.”

An operation was also under way Monday to evacuate some 1,200 tourists from the Gili Islands, three tiny, coral-fringed tropical islands a few kilometres off the northwest coast of Lombok that are particularly popular with backpackers and divers.

Local disaster officials said 358 tourists had been evacuated so far. At least one person, an Indonesian holidaymaker, was killed on the Gili islands while another tourist died on nearby Bali, which is a major destination.

Denink Ayu, a hotel receptionist on Gili Trawangan, the biggest of the three Gilis, told CNN Indonesia that “everybody was panicking” after the quake hit.

“We are fighting for boats now. We are all queueing at the port, but there’s not enough boats,” she said tearfully.

– Night of aftershocks –

But it was Lombok which bore the brunt of Sunday evening’s quake.

The shallow tremor sent thousands of Lombok residents and tourists scrambling outdoors, where many spent the night as strong aftershocks including one of 5.3-magnitude continued to rattle the island.

The quake knocked out power in many areas, and parts of Lombok remained without electricity on Monday.

Nugroho said up to 20,000 people may have been evacuated from their homes on Lombok and that paramedics, food and medication were badly needed.

Hundreds of bloodied and bandaged victims were treated outside damaged hospitals in the main city of Mataram and other hard-hit parts of the island.

Patients lay on beds under makeshift wards sent up in tents, surrounded by drip stands and monitors, as doctors in blue scrubs attended to them.

“Many injured people are being treated outside of hospitals and health clinics because the buildings were damaged,” Nugroho said.

Upset relatives were huddled around loved ones in front of the main clinic in Mataram, as medical staff struggled to cope with hundreds of patients, many of whom were yet to be seen despite spending the night out in the open.

“What we really need now are paramedics, we are short-staffed, we also need medications,” Supriadi, a spokesman for Mataram general hospital, told AFP.

Outside the hospital, the rubble-strewn streets of Mataram were empty, save for a few survivors picking nervously through the ruins.

Most of the victims were in the mountainous north and east of the island, away from the main tourist spots and coastal districts in the south and west.

– Collapsed mosques –

Najmul Akhyar, the head of North Lombok district, estimated that 80 percent of that region was damaged by the quake.

“We need heavy equipment because some mosques have collapsed and we suspect some worshippers are still trapped inside,” he told Metro TV.

As authorities scrambled to assess the extent of damage in Lombok, some tourists were trying to leave.

“We tried to go to the airport but there was no taxi, no transport, no plan for evacuation,” French tourist Jina told Metro TV.

“Later I stopped a car and I asked a local please take me and my family to the airport and he said ‘’okay no problem’.”

Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, who was in Lombok for a security conference when the earthquake struck, described on Facebook how his hotel room on the 10th floor shook violently.

“Walls cracked, it was quite impossible to stand up,” he said.

Bali’s international airport suffered damage to its terminal but the runway was unaffected and operations had returned to normal, disaster agency officials said. Lombok airport was also operating.

Indonesia, one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth, straddles the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

In 2014, a devastating tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in western Indonesia killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

A deep 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck off eastern Indonesia on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey said, but there was no tsunami warning.

The strong quake was centered about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north-northeast of Maumere town on the island of Flores, the USGS said, at a depth of 360 miles.

Indonesia, an archipelago of thousands of islands, sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a seismic activity hotspot.

It is frequently hit by quakes, most of them harmless. However, the archipelago remains acutely alert to tremors that might trigger tsunamis.

In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

Four miners were killed and three others were trapped underground after an earthquake hit a gold mine outside Johannesburg, its owners said Friday.

Thirteen miners were initially trapped about three kilometres (two miles) below the surface, James Wellsted, spokesman for mining company Sibanye-Stillwater, said in a statement.

Six of the rescued workers have been hospitalised.

Wellsted said the epicentre of the 2.2-magnitude quake was close to where the miners were working on Thursday.

Operations at the Masakhane mine in Driefontein have now been suspended.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said it was “angry and concerned at the rate at which mining incidents are happening at Sibanye-Stillwater.”

In February, nearly 1,000 miners were trapped underground for 30 hours following a power cut caused by a storm in another mine owned by Sibanye-Stillwater.

A few days later, two miners were killed after ground collapsed at a mine also belonging to the group.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) has called for the government to investigate the accident and take action to prevent any further tragedies.

“This latest tragedy was caused by a seismic shift, but these are a hazard that can be expected in deep mines and research must be done to find ways of managing their impact on those working underground so that no more lives are lost,” SAFTU said.

Mine accidents are common in South Africa. In 2016, 73 people died in mines around the country, according to figures from the Chamber of Mines.AFP

A 5.1 magnitude earthquake has hit central Turkey and left 39 people injured and caused damage to homes, however, no one was hospitalised in serious condition, the country’s health minister reported on Tuesday.

The quake in Adiyaman province, about 530 kilometres south-east of the capital Ankara, struck in the middle of the night.

Footage released by the local Dogan news agency showed livestock, including goats, being rescued from beneath the rubble in the early morning hours as heavy machinery was brought in to demolish homes that had been badly damaged and risked collapse.

Ahmet Demircan, Turkey’s Health Minister, was quoted by the state-run Anadolu news agency, as saying 35 people remained in hospital, but none faced life-threatening injuries.

Turkey sits across major geographic fault lines and has suffered devastating earthquakes in the past, including one near Istanbul in 1999, that left more than 17,000 people dead.

A powerful quake has left one person dead, about 1,100 houses, buildings and public facilities destroyed in Indonesia, an official said on Wednesday.

The official at the National Disaster Management Agency disclosed that the casualties and the damage took place in Banten province, Jakarta and West Java province.

“Lebak district of Banten province suffered the most, while assessment of the impact of the quake persists.

“The natural disaster also triggered evacuation, but the number of evacuees is still being assessed,’’ the agency stated.

According to the meteorology and geophysics agency of Indonesia, a 6.1-magnitude quake struck off Indonesia’s capital at 13:34 p.m. (0634 GMT) on Tuesday, with the epicentre at 81 km southwest of Lebak and a depth at 10 km under seabed.